Sunday, August 17, 2014

The Poverty Games

**If you are a poor newly wed in the need of entertainment, or an intense fan of Petrelly (Petrece?) and want to emulate our lives through imitation, then this blog post is a How-To just for you!**

As Peter and I live on a tight budget we don't have a lot of store bought games in our home. Nevertheless, we are super creative people who can't be kept down by the man, so we play the games we don't have anyway. YOLO! Here are some of our favourites that you can play with only two players; perfect for date nights or for people who only have one friend, just like us.

Mancala:
Mancala is an African game of stones. That's what the internet tells me, anyway. Here are an outlined set of rules also found on the internet for those who have never played:
  • Mancala is played with seven pits per player.
  • Your pits are the 6 small pits on your side of the board, and the larger Kalaha pit on the right hand side.
  • Each player starts the game by placing 4 stones into each of their 6 small pits.
  • A turn consists of taking all the stones from one of your pits, and then dropping a stone into each successive pit in a counter-clockwise fashion
  • If the final stone is placed in your Kalaha, then you get another turn.
  • If the final stone ends in one of your empty pits while stones sit in the pit opposite then all of those stones are placed into your Kalaha.
  • The winner is the person with the most stones in his Kalaha
  • The game ends when all of a player's pits are empty. At that point, the other player places the remaining
    stones in her Kalaha.
We don't have a Mancala board, or rather, we DIDN'T have a Mancala board until last week when I made one out of an old egg carton and a bunch of tiny Legos. SUPER SIMPLE. I don't even think you need more guidance than that... Here's what our board looks like just incase. 

Stunning, right? Our big pits of points were just the carpet to the right of our sides.  
Battleship: 
I'm assuming everyone knows how to play Battleship. If you don't know, rules are here. To play Battleship at home without a board all you need is to draw two 10x10 grids on your individual paper - X axis 1-10, Y axis A-J - which you cunningly hide from your opponent to make sure they're not a cheater cheater pants on eater. Pencil in where your ships are on one of the grids, and then continue play as usual. This was one of Peter's and my go-to games to play when we were long distance, seeing as the boards don't need to interact at all. SCORE. 

The Floor is Lava: 
Again, a game that I assume and hope all of you know very well. This filled many of our Friday and Saturday nights when we were engaged because we had no friends and usually we had my house to ourselves as my roommates DID have friends. To play, rearrange the furniture in your home, or just in your immediate playing area, to create new obstacles for each round. Once you have your arena prepared, you then take turns assigning your opponent to retrieve or place an item at a certain spot in the area. You CANNOT TOUCH THE FLOOR, because it is lava, as the game name indicates. Peter and I usually ruled that you could not use the same route twice in one game because we're hardcore and essentially olympians, but do what you prefer. 

Checkers: 
Masking tape and small tokens of a uniformed colour (Legos, Bananagram tiles, pieces of paper etc.) create the perfect Checkers board. The last time we played we just used the tiles of the kitchen floor as squares and Bananagram tiles as checkers, one of us letter side up the other letter side down. Pretty much the easiest board ever, albeit a large one. 

Peter beats me at every game we play. It's practically spousal abuse. ;)

The Rainy Day Game: 
This game became to be and named because it was created on a particularly rainy weekend. We used Rook cards which have four colours (yellow, black, red, and green) and assigned a category to each colour. Yellow was Physical Challenge, green: Disney Quotes, red: Harry Potter Trivia, and black: Truth. When we recreated this game the weekend before our wedding with my sister Sharah we switched it up, adding the categories "take an embarrassing picture" and "spot the real trivia fact." The categories can really be whatever the heck you want, and you can use face cards too. Whatever ensures your figurative ship won't sink (get it? Whatever floats your boat?! bahahahahahahaha I am so funny to me).
In order to play, once you have decided your categories, you simply put the deck face down and take turns drawing a card, then completing the challenge attached. 
It's a really simple game. I feel like it doesn't sound simple... but it is. Here is some photographic evidence of how fun it is. 

Here we see Sharah completing "Take an Embarrassing Picture." The picture being her about to receive an intense swirly.
Physical challenge: with a pineapple on his head, Peter must dance and lip-sync to Best Years of Our Lives for my roommates

Poker: 
Granted, with poker you still need a deck of face cards, but chips are something you can improvise with. We generally use Uno cards divided into different colours and distributed as chips. Green = $1, Yellow = $5 Blue = $10 Red = $20. 

As you can probably tell, I'm running out of fun games that we play, especially ones that would be interesting to you. We also enjoy marathoning shows on Netflix, ordering Pizza, making forts, saying we are going to make a fort but then giving up before we start and watching Netflix instead, naked wrestling, shadow puppets on the ceiling above our bed, twerk-offs, gossiping, talking in weird voices, naked hugging, watching fantastic movies that are categorically awful, and planning our future as Rich People (it's capitalised because it's important). 

Marriage is the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. 

11 comments:

  1. I'M ON YOUR BLOG! I'M FAMOUS!

    I was just thinking the other day about how you guys make marriage look really fun. Which is annoying. Excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep alone in my cold spinster bed.

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    1. YOU ARE SO FAMOUS!! And famous on my blog is the best kind of famous, because no one will stalk you over it.
      Marriage is super fun, I'm excited for you, but I'm also sorry that it is annoying. I will try harder to be less annoying and more boring. <3

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  2. Booooooooo! I'm booooing because my comment disappeared after I signed in. But hey, I finally figured out how to sign in so I can comment directly to your blog!
    Yaaaay!! You guys are so fun! Whenever I get around to having an attempt at being the kind of person that makes monthly goals I will make it a goal to try to have your kind of fun... a certain number of times that month. ...uh I'll make it specific whenever I get to that point. :) I'll let you know how it goes. Also, song for you: Eliza Doolittle Moneybox.
    Sharah, you've been on the blog at least twice right?? You're waaay famous. :)

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    1. YOU WORKED IT OUT! Yay! Sometimes I think about things they do on Raising Hope if I need suggestions too, because they're poor and super happy, right? Right.

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    2. Right! I was always impressed with the fun they had on Raising Hope too. I wish it would come on tv here again so I can watch it. There aren't even very good teasers online of it for when I want to show someone who hasn't heard of it. It's an odd one to try to explain. But they have sooo much fun! I gotta get a move on the goal making thing.

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  3. There was that time I broke the water balloon condom, but I don't think I've ever been pictured before... Have I?

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    1. I will have to start doing a Sharah-Doug feature of the week with hot pictures of you. It could be great.

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    2. DOO it! If only she had pictures of the first china haircut incident. Epic.

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    3. Rightright Sharah. That's what I meant. Breaking the water balloon condom is an awesome kind of famous.

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  4. Everything is more fun when you're naked (e.g. wrestling, hugging, etc...) ;)

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